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How SMBs Can Use Geotoko to Run Location-Based Promotions

Stephanie Miles

Writer, editor, Street Fight

Managing a location-based marketing campaign that rewards check-ins on multiple platforms can be a challenge for even the savviest small business owner. For merchants with more than one retail location, the task can be downright overwhelming. Geotoko is a marketing and analytics platform that business owners can use to create flexible promotions and monitor check-ins at hundreds of shops and stores from one central dashboard.

How it works: Customers who check-in at restaurants and retailers on mobile applications like Foursquare and Facebook Places aren't just sharing their latest whereabouts with friends online. They're also offering a treasure trove of useful data that merchants can use to gain insight and gather competitive intelligence about the behavior and motivation of their target clientele. Geotoko breaks down this information and uses it to help merchants create effective location-based promotions on Foursquare, Facebook Places and Twitter. The data gleamed from these promotions is analyzed by Geotoko and broken down in a way that shows merchants which days and times are the busiest based on the number of check-ins and online mentions. Merchants can also use Geotoko's heat maps to see how their retail locations are doing compared to the number of check-ins at neighboring businesses.

Geotoko in action: Merchants can use Geotoko to build their own location-based sweepstakes, giveaways and contests as a way to reward loyal customers and promote new products and offerings. The platform automatically matches its users' locations to preexisting venues on Facebook Places and Foursquare, effectively eliminating one of the more difficult aspects of running a location-based campaign. Business owners have the opportunity to set the parameters for their own promotions—including the start and end dates, participating locations and prizes or rewards—while maintaining autonomy in determining where their campaigns are going to run. Published campaigns go out to customers on multiple platforms, including Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook. Merchants can also promote their campaigns by placing special QR codes provided by Geotoko on their websites and printed marketing materials. The resulting analytics are consolidated and made available to merchants through the Geotoko dashboard within 24 hours.

Business owners can compare daily check-ins and engagement statistics across multiple locations, and find out whether participating customers are overwhelmingly male or female. Thanks to its integration with Klout, Geotoko can also measure the social influence of a business' most loyal customers. Geotoko's small business packages begin at $149 per month.

Why it works: Geotoko isn't the only platform to help SMBs create and manage their own location-based promotions. What sets Geotoko apart, however, is the flexibility it provides and the detailed data it produces. Using Geotoko, merchants can see where their customers are checking-in before arriving at their stores and restaurants. They can then use this information when deciding where to focus their traditional marketing efforts. Geotoko is also a valuable platform for businesses with multiple locations. A merchant with 25 retail outposts spread across multiple counties, for example, can use Geotoko to run a unified campaign that rewards customers for checking-in at any participating location. Looking at the results of these campaigns, merchants can see which of their outposts received the fewest check-ins and deliver extra attention where it's needed in the future.

Maximizing the benefits: Larger businesses and brands with hundreds of locations spread across multiple territories will find Geotoko's advanced features especially useful. The platform offers a white-label solution for merchants that want completely branded apps and campaigns, along with a group-importing feature that businesses can use to import hundreds of retail locations into the Geotoko platform at once. Geotoko automatically matches these imported locations to pre-existing venues on location-based services like Foursquare and Facebook Places.